


Washed Up

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Whitechapel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're all waiting for the chance to lay the ghosts to rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Washed Up

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt 'the tide' at story_lottery.

When they closed the copycat Ripper case and rubber-stamped it at HQ, Chandler knew it wasn't really over. He shared with his team the same opinion he'd shared with Commander Anderson – that if they monitored all the suicides in the Metropolitan area for the next two weeks, they'd find the killer.

Anderson told him to forget it, but for the team it's unfinished business. Chandler doesn't encourage them, but he doesn't tell them to stop, either. His men have contacts all across London, and they're like terriers after a rat.

They're working a late one when the call comes through. It's a cold night, made colder because of the full moon. It's December, and frost fingers its way across pavements and steel and glass. In a tense, anticipatory silence they gather and head out to the car park. The tarmac is dusted with glittering ice, and Chandler places his feet with caution. Kent's shiny new shoes that he's been displaying with such delight in the office have no grip on the soles, and he goes skidding across the yard. He flails, makes an undignified squeak, and Chandler moves forward to grasp his arm.

Kent falls against him, a thud of warmth and a tight grip through the heavy wool of his coat; an exhalation of surprise and the brief tease of aftershave.

"Careful," Chandler murmurs, gently righting him.

"Thank you, sir." Kent glances up then looks straight back down before he pulls away and straightens his sleeves, shooting his cuffs and flicking his head from side to side in an attempt to shake off his embarrassment.

Chandler watches his progress with a half smile.

"Guv." Miles opens the passenger door of the cruiser and hooks a leg into the foot-well. "You drivin', guv, or shall I?"

"I'll do it." Chandler strides forward and catches the jingling keys Miles tosses to him. The tongues of metal are sharp in his palm as he closes his hand around them. McCormack and Kent take the other car, engine idling as they wait for Chandler to lead the way.

They pull out of the station in miniature convoy. Chandler drives at the limit, but it's not enough for Miles.

"Let's motor. We ain't got much time. Charlie has to call it in soon. He's doin' me a favour and I don't want to land him in it." Miles sits forward, one hand wrapped around the door handle and the other tapping a nervous rhythm on the dashboard. The pattern of street lights traced over his face forms an uneven strobe that makes his anxiety more tangible.

"We'll get there." Chandler recognises the confidence in his tone and is amazed by it. A few weeks ago, he could barely face himself in the mirror. Now he's content, a part of a team that, while it doesn't run like clockwork, it still runs.

"D'you really think..." Miles abandons the question.

"Yes, I do."

Miles nods. "I hope so."

They arrive at a silent wharf on the Isle of Dogs, Chandler slewing the car to one side to allow McCormack to pull up beside him. A heavyset cop waits for them, and after exchanging a muttered conversation with Miles, jerks a thumb behind him. "Yer stiff's down there. Take a shufty but be quick, otherwise I'll be in the shit."

The team gather around the spindly shape of a wrought iron ladder leading down the retaining wall to the mud banks washed by the Thames below. They hesitate, looking at Chandler, and he swings himself down the ladder into the darkness.

He jumps down the final step and lands on solid ground. It's not a bank but a concrete sill, covered in a thick wash of mud dumped by the fluctuating tides. It stinks, the black sucking mulch of river and human detritus covering his shoes with filth and decay. Chandler lifts his feet and walks across the sill to where the corpse lies on its back, sightlessly staring at the night sky.

The others congregate around him in a half circle. There's silence for a moment, almost religious in its intensity, until the quiet is shattered by the blat of a ship's horn somewhere across the river.

"Is that him?" Kent asks, his voice hesitant.

"Aye, it's him." Miles stares at the bloated corpse. "Right, guv?"

Chandler stands over the body of the man they knew as Dr David Cohen and reflects that they'll never know who he is or why he did it. The criminal psychologists at HQ practically salivated over every detail he'd given them during his debrief, but there was always disappointment in their eyes. They'd wanted Cohen for themselves. They'd wanted to open him up, peel him back and slice him into bite-sized academic pieces, easily digestible, to uncover the origins and motivation of a serial killer.

Three months ago, Chandler knows he'd have wanted to know the same things. He'd driven himself demented trying to profile Cohen, trying to second-guess him. Now he doesn't care about the whys and hows. He's just glad it's ended. His desk is spilling over with other cases, other tragedies, both small and large. He still cares, but he's learning how to care less. He's learning to pace himself.

He stares at Cohen's gaseous corpse, the medical scrubs taut across the distended belly, the flesh stark white and ribboned with oozing black under the moonlight. The eyes have gone, and what remains of the lips are drawn back as if in a sneer. Chandler remembers the way Cohen left the lick of DNA on Cathy Lane's eyeballs and he's glad the fish and gulls have devoured and burrowed into the empty sockets.

"It's him," he says at last in response to Miles' question. "It's finished."

"Bastard." McCormack pronounces his opinion without heat. He turns away to look at the rip of the river, black and silver. "Fucking bastard."

Miles steps back, his shoes squelching in the stinking mud. "Usually takes a man two minutes to die in this muck. It's the cold that does it. He'd have known it, I suppose, being a quack."

"Two minutes." Kent shudders at a gasp of frozen wind blowing across the river. "It doesn't seem fair. Two minutes, when he killed those women like that and stabbed Skip and almost killed the guv'nor."

Chandler smiles. "In the olden days, if we'd caught him, we'd have hanged him at Wapping. Hanged him from a gibbet and let three tides wash over him to make sure he was dead."

"He's had more than three tides." Miles loosens his shoulders and turns away. "Let's get out of here so Charlie can call it in."

"Good idea." McCormack squidges across the mud after him. "Fuck. The wife will kill me. I just shined me shoes last week."

"Sir?" Kent waves a hand. "Are we done here, sir?"

Chandler pulls himself from his thoughts and looks up at the young constable. "Yes. Yes, we are."

He's the last one up the ladder. He grips Charlie's hand and murmurs his thanks, then pauses, leaning against the side of the cruiser to scrape off the worst of the mud from his shoes. The stench and damp of the Thames has infiltrated through to his bones, and he knows the expensive hand-stitched leather will bear a white tidemark by tomorrow.

Three weeks ago, he was told he'd never make higher than a DI. His role in the Ripper enquiry had guaranteed his failure to rise through the ranks. His incompetence has absolved him of his future. Never has Chandler been so glad to be washed up.

He opens the car door and slides into the driver's seat. "A bit nippy out."

Miles snorts. "You're tellin' me, guv."

Chandler starts the engine and the headlights cut across the deserted wharf. It's a cold night, a freezing night, yet he feels warm.


End file.
